Keith Hudson's Musings

Cultural gallimaufry

“We’re no longer allies of Germany” says the leader of Podemos, the brand new political party in Spain that came from nothing this year to winning 69 seats in last week’s general election. Quite what he means, and precisely what will transpire in the next few weeks, no-one can possibly guess. But that doesn’t matter,

Francois Hollande, as France gets deeper into economic trouble, realises that Germany is not inclined to help with a bail-out. Greece, after good-cop bad[cop treatment by the European Central Bank — virtually Germany — doesn’t have warm feelings either. Italy, as individualistic and Germany is disciplined never takes too much notice of what the EU says.

And then we have news from Afghanistan. The Taliban have niw almost totally taken over Helmand province which our troops were guarding up until a year ago with a cost of 600 lives and quite as many severe injuries. As one BBC journalist said today: “British people will now be asking what we were doing there in the first place.” Exactly.

Moral — Cultures cannot be treated lightly. They can’t be squeezed together as the EU Commissioners intend — “ever closer union” they call it. Mere friendship between countries is not sufficient, it would seem. As for Afghanistan, as with Iraq in 2003, as is now being intended for Syria now by the Western powers — we simply can’t graft our political customs into their quite different cultures.
Cultures,